In October 1991, an 86-year-old oil tycoon was wheeled into a Houston strip club, where he fell in love with a woman who was working the day shift. The octogenarian’s name was J. Howard Marshall, and he was worth over $1 billion. And the woman was Anna Nicole Smith, a 23-year-old aspiring model. The two were reportedly smitten at first sight, and the very next day, Marshall gave Smith an envelope with $1,000 in cash and told her, “Don’t go to work, my Lady Love.
You don’t have to ever go back to work.”
The rest was history. Marshall showered Smith with expensive gifts, including a red Mercedes convertible, access to a bungalow that had once belonged to Marilyn Monroe, and over $1 million worth of jewelry. And shortly after Smith found fame as a Playboy model, the pair married in 1994 — but their wedded bliss lasted just 14 months before Marshall died.
Until that point, Smith had lived a life vastly different from J. Howard Marshall’s. Born in Texas to a teenage mother, she’d dropped out of high school and spent the past several years working odd jobs to provide for herself and her son. But Smith had big dreams for herself and aspired to be a model.
On that fateful day, Smith was assigned to work the day shift because she was a mediocre dancer. J. Howard Marshall, meanwhile, couldn’t go out at night. At the right place, at the right time, they hit it off.
“He had no will to live and I went over to see him,” Smith told 20/20 in 2000, calling J. Howard Marshall “really, really funny” and “brilliant.” “He got a little twinkle in his eyes and he asked me to dance for him, and I did.”
The next day, over lunch at a local hotel, Smith told Marshall that she had to go back to work. New York Magazine reported that Marshall responded by handing her an envelope with ten, one-hundred-dollar bills inside, telling her, “Don’t go to work, my Lady Love. You don’t have to ever go back to work.”
He consequently showered Smith with expensive gifts like a red Mercedes convertible. He also started to shower her with marriage proposals — but Smith turned him down multiple times. She told the billionaire that she wanted to focus on her career.
Indeed, Smith’s career had started to take off. Around the same time that she met the oil tycoon, Smith also posed for a Playboy scout looking for potential models. Playboy editors in Los Angeles liked what they saw, flew her out to L.A., and put her — and her 42DD augmented breasts — on Playboy’s March 1992 cover. That May, Anna Nicole Smith posed for the centerfold.
To J. Howard Marshall’s delight, Smith became the 1993 Playboy Playmate of the Year. He bought her more gifts, including a stay at Marilyn Monroe’s Los Angeles bungalow and other properties. And he proposed again — and again — until Smith finally said yes in the spring of 1994.
